A capacitor is a passive two-terminal electrical device used to store energy within an electric field. A capacitor contains at least two electrodes separated by a dielectric layer. A capacitance of a capacitor is proportional to an area between the electrodes, and inversely proportional to a distance between them (e.g., a thickness of the dielectric layer). Accordingly, the capacitance of a capacitor can be increased by increasing the area of the electrodes, and/or by decreasing the distance between them.
A metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitor is a kind of capacitor commonly used in integrated circuits (ICs). MIM capacitors usually comprise a dielectric material arranged between electrodes comprising metal structures disposed within a back-end-of-the-line (BEOL) metal stack.